


The Full Bonnaroo Whammy

by Peapods



Series: ...without really trying [4]
Category: Pundit & Broadcast Journalist RPF (US)
Genre: M/M, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 08:02:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6321499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peapods/pseuds/Peapods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a fit of extreme middle-aged crisis, Anderson and Keith go to Bonnaroo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Full Bonnaroo Whammy

**Author's Note:**

> I am posting this slightly drunk and almost anyone reading this should not be surprised. Merry Spring. Happy Spring. Whatever.

Keith says it’s hot. Anderson disagrees.

It is _inappropriate_.

Even as the afternoon wanes, the humidity is killer and he feels like he’s breathing through a wet wool sweater. Anderson has spent plenty of time in the South, even during the summer, and he swears it didn’t feel like this. His shirt is sticking in places he didn’t even know it could stick. He doesn’t even want to talk about his dick and balls.

Keith looks no better, but he tries to out-stubborn Anderson by a factor of nine million at any given time, so he’s pretending like this is all fine. He is wearing a bandana on his head. It is not fine.

When they’d announced their plans, Rachel had laughed until she had to excuse herself to pee, Stephen had warned them not to post their tents next to the toilets, and Jon had dug around in his attic until he’d found a rainbow colored wig that he’d plopped on Anderson’s head and called a “friend finder.”

“Although honestly, with your hair and Keith’s height,” he’d said, with a shrug.

His nieces are here somewhere, probably dressed in seriously inappropriate beach wear, but he’s the cool uncle so he can’t say anything about it. And when he says _somewhere_ , he means somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of steaming, young people who keep looking over at him and Keith like they might be cops. 

He’s pretty sure the guy in the kitten-Bob Marley shirt just ate an entire blotter of acid based on that assumption.

Anderson has done research. He has the right food and the right clothes and trunk full of bottled water. His shirt has wicking technology that will keep sweat off him. He’s got rope, rain gear, an air mattress, a full first aid kit, and a tarp.

Keith has also done research and come to rather different conclusions on what to bring. Anderson had to do the speed limit all the way down because of the two cases of hard cider, three handles of vodka, and gram of marijuana stowed in the trunk.

“You make sure we don’t die, I’ll make sure we have a good time,” Keith had told him when he’d balked and started spraying air freshener on the sock Keith had stuffed the weed in.

They’ve set up their tent and blown up the air mattress and now Keith is just standing outside with one hand propped on his hip and the other fisting a bottle of sweating cider. Anderson sees him raise it to a car full of twenty-somethings and hides in the tent in shame.

It’s fucking hot in the tent. He cracks a bottle of water and gulps it.

“Get out here, you gotta see this kid in chaps,” Keith yells, shaking the tent.

He gets out.

He lets Keith pour out half a Vitamin Water before pouring in a hefty measure of vodka. “Your cocktail, sir,” he says after shaking the bottle.

Anderson drinks half of it in one go.

_Jesus Christ, it’s only Thursday._

*****

Anderson has done drugs, you know. Shut up, he has. There’s been weed and cocaine and pills. Weed as a teenager because teenager. Coke in college because crew. Pills all the other times because sleep.

Somehow, the hallucinogens had passed him by.

The colors are _so_ pretty.

“I know, you’ve said so at least ten times,” Keith says, and Christ he’s handsome. He’s all Anderson’s too. “Why are you smiling like you just met LeVar Burton?”

The music is really great. _Really._ He’s just swaying and the old man on the stage is slurring out lyrics and there’s a saxophone and Anderson doesn’t even feel the heat anymore, not really. He closes his eyes and sways and he’s giggling.

An arm sneaks around him and he leans into Keith.

He has never felt this peaceful in his life.

Honestly, that’s probably the shrooms and Van Morrison talking.

*****

He’s drunk. That is a thought he can put together with accuracy and in a coherent manner. Keith had replaced half his camelback with vodka, the absolute shithead. He’s been sucking on that pack for a half a day.

It’s really bright.

He sits down because he needs to. He’s not sure where he is or where Keith is or whether he’s in anyone’s way and he has a brief thought to care about it, but then says fuck it.

He can hear a beat and he just nods to it. It’s all he can do. 

“You alright, man?” He almost doesn’t believe that voice. It’s a stoner-fried voice, deep, and slightly Valley. He looks up. The kid is very tall. It occurs to him that he’s not a kid. He’s at least 30. That’s a sobering thought.

“I’m good,” he tells the manly stranger. He’s handsome in that beard. Anderson moves his face over toward the tubing to his camelback, mouthing like a child until he captures it, while the guy watches. He’s definitely a guy. A dude. Very straight. Anderson waves him away.

“I mean, yeah, I’m straight, but you don’t look so great. Maybe you wanna stumble over to that tent?”

Anderson surmises that he has spoken aloud without meaning to. Again. The tent the guy is vaguely pointing to is very far away. 

“Okay, how about we get you out of this crowd?” The guy asks, but he’s already hauling Anderson to his feet. Anderson maybe yells ‘stranger danger.’ Or tries to. Anyways, he’s on his feet and there is walking and holy shit, there’s their car and tent. “I recognized you. We’re neighbors.”

The kid, guy, friend-person props him in a chair they left out and lopes over to his own camp--there are at least 6 cars and they’ve created a whole village with a canopy and home decor and furnishings. A minute later--it is, possibly, longer--the guy returns. He has buttoned his shirt, which is a damn shame, and is toting a bag full of food and drink and, it turns out, weed.

Keith finds him hours later.

“I’m trading you in for a younger model,” Anderson says, mostly sober. Jeremy laughs, completely comfortable with being claimed apparently, and Keith doesn’t even scowl like usual. He lowers himself into the other camp chair like he might die if he can’t remember how to sit properly then leans over and kisses Anderson lushly, nastily.

Okay, being fair, Anderson is quite stoned, if not quite so drunk anymore, and he sighs into this kiss.

“That’s my cue,” barely registers as Jeremy rises, hefts his chair, and disappears.

They can’t really fuck in this heat and Anderson doesn’t really want to, but he hauls Keith up and into the tent because he needs to be indecent and feel young.

It’s close and hot in the tent, but the direct sun is off them. Anderson wants to _make out_. He wants to just put his hands on Keith and wonder whether his weight will smother him and kiss until they’re sore.

They don’t kiss forcefully, both a little too out of it to manage more than this soft slip-slide of lips and tongues and limp, flopping hands. Anderson gets hard slowly and it’s _painful_ but so, so good. 

Keith sucks him. Anderson almost wants to record the moment, it’s so rare. He would show it to Jeremy and tell him what the competition is because Keith, for all he won’t do this on anything like a regular basis, has got a talented fucking tongue. A learned skill from liking to hear himself talk, Anderson theorizes. This time it’s languid and the suction is long, but not hard, and when Anderson comes he just shudders out a breath and closes his eyes. It’s too hot to do much else.

Too hot, even, to return the favor, it turns out, because he passes out not even a minute after his orgasm subsides.

Keith doesn’t complain _too_ much when he wakes up, but he does demand a hand job. Anderson figures he can oblige.

*****

Thing is, he knows they’re old. He’s gotten slowly used to the idea. Keith didn’t even postpone his descent into post-middle age apathy and indulgence. He gives very little shit what anyone thinks of him anymore and that has never been more in evidence than here at a young person’s festival, where he wears a fanny pack without irony. Anderson still checks his profile while passing a store window to make sure his pants haven’t hiked up over the backs of his shoes.

These Neighbor Kids--sharing their drugs, asking if they need a beer, talking about the music and the stupid shit some person in their group has done-- are what Anderson clings to. For all the whiteness of his hair and that he was practically born 35, he is a man desperately hanging onto the opinions of others and the slight sickness that bubbles up when someone he likes or respects might not think as well of him as he would like. People say shit about him all the time and he had learned early to ignore it, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t a stack of receipts in his brain detailing every time someone has said something a little too close to home.

“Look alive, Andy, the children have been trying to get your attention for awhile,” Keith says in his ear and he realizes that the tiny (she is _tiny_ ) brunette is looking at him expectantly, eyebrows raised and eyes as wide as they’ll go when you’re that stoned.

Oh. She’s holding out a newly packed bowl. Anderson takes a deep breath and thinks, _fuck it_.

*****

Sunday-- _how is it_ Sunday? _Wasn’t it just Thursday?_ \--comes and next-door-neighbor Jeremy tells them they should lay off the hard stuff because Sunday is wind down day. Anderson heartily agrees, taking a hit like he does this all the time instead of just this weekend. It’s early yet for music and there are groups here and there playing their own guitars and a few Anderson suspects have not yet been to bed.

He and Keith don’t know a lot of the bands, but they’re game and mostly sober so they go exploring. They eat food they didn’t want Friday (Anderson had licked all the flavor off a salt and vinegar chip, but had to throw away the actual chip) and forgot existed Saturday. They stop in a couple tents to hear what’s going on. It’s a little cooler so they’re not perspiring to an ungodly degree and they actually enjoy the sun. Keith’s definitely sunburned and Anderson assumes he must be as well, but the pot is keeping that pain at bay. 

They buy drinks every so often, maintaining a buzz, and as the sun goes down they spot a bedazzled umbrella in the crowd that they recognize. They make their way toward it.

The Neighbor Kids are passing around a joint and a camelback full of whiskey and the crowd is huge and it doesn’t even matter. He and Keith are swaying with the crowd to “New York State of Mind.” Keith’s behind him, his arms linked around Anderson’s middle.

“Marry me,” Keith whispers in his ear.

“What, now? Was one of those kids ordained?” Anderson tips his head back to shout and look Keith in the eye.

Keith is laughing. “No protestations about being too old? No ‘why haven’t you done this earlier’? No ‘where’s my fucking ring’?”

“I expect sapphires.”

“‘Cause they match your eyes?”

“Mmm,” Anderson says. “Jon can give me away.”

“Then Rachel gets to be my best man.”

“Has Stephen been ordained through one of those online things?”

“If he hasn’t, I’m sure he will,” Keith says, jostling Anderson so he has to turn back to the stage. “So?”

Anderson thinks it’s sweet that Keith can’t look him in the eye while suggesting they pool their considerable resources and possibly share a last name in a way that will be financially onerous to nullify.

Anderson turns back, unwilling to let Keith have his comfort zone. “Yeah, why not?” 

“Fuck.”

“Too late, I’ve said yes.”

“Already preparing the barren marriage bed?”

Anderson laughs because he can’t not. 

The music ends and they’re stumbling back to the campsite and Anderson has his arm around Keith’s like a damsel and he loves it. Maybe Keith wasn’t serious and maybe he was, but it doesn’t matter. He keeps smiling up at him and Keith smiles back and they’re laughing.

They lay off the hard drugs as advised, but enough cider and vodka gets them wasted again. The Neighbor Kids--seriously they’re in their late twenties, but some of them look about 12 so they’re kids--are in similar states. Some go to bed early, trying to be back at work tomorrow. He and Keith have far more leeway and some of the others stay up as well. Their chairs are out and they’ve created a fire-effect with their various lights and a t-shirt the diffuses the light.

“So did you really propose during Billy Joel?” Tiny Brunette (her name might be Tess?) asks.

“We’re from New York. It was a good a time as any,” Keith answers.

Anderson hits him just out of the principle of the thing.

“But yeah. I just realized that if he’s willing to endure this kind of trip, marriage to me couldn’t be much worse.”

They’re all laughing and Anderson, for all he tries not to, is smiling at Keith fondly. He knows it’s fond; he can feel the spread of his smile, the pressure of trying to contain it.

Maybe they’re getting old and maybe they’re both too old for marriage for the first time, but whatever.

 _Fuck it,_ he thinks, and for once in this entire weekend, that thought is freeing.


End file.
